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OK, so I fell down …

I did. I fell down in quite a dramatic manner, as a matter of fact. I saved it until our friends, Les and Sophie, were leaving our home after a terrific visit.

Les & Sophie spend a lot of time on the road in their almost classic Winnebago. Their unstated goal is to spend at least one night at every Elks Club parking lot in the nation. Diane and I, and a few other classic owners, have shared nights in Elks Clubs with them. Still, they are the King & Queen of Elks Club Camping. They are forever on the go and it’s always an honor when they land in our back yard, the St. Helens Elks Club, and pay us a visit.

So, we sat and talked for a long time, catching up. Then they had to leave and I, being a good host, walked them out to their car. Diane did, too. At the end of our walk, next to the driveway, is a sprinkler head that used to spray on the garage door until I put a piece of plexiglas in front of it. Apparently I forgot it was there because when I tried to step to the driveway I kinda went through it. It made a resounding SNAP when it broke and sort of masked my shriek of terror when I realized I was heading for the asphalt.

Times like that are very exciting for the main participant because they know they’re going down, and they know it’s going to hurt, and there’s absolutely nothing they can do about it. It’s a waiting game to discover how much damage is going to be done.

Oddly, during those moments, time slows a bit for some of us, allowing us to adjust the angle of our unavoidable approach to the horizontal plane. The hope is the angle can be adjusted enough to allow a bit of roll and not land absolutely flat, which would be a bad thing. When I hit the plexiglas my approach to the driveway was unalterably modified.

The plexiglas was aligned against the driveway curb at about a 45 degree angle, and the curb is about a foot high where I made my critical error. Stepping out with my right foot I hit the plexiglas about halfway up, snapping off the top half as my foot slid down toward the sacred flowers below my feet, over which I was trying to step. Since I had anticipated landing on the driveway with my right foot, I picked up my left foot as soon as my right foot made contact with the plexiglas so I was effectively in free fall for a short time. Leaning forward, I was, caused the most tender part of my right shin bone to make solid contact with the exposed cement curb of the driveway and my left leg didn’t land on anything because I put a lot of effort in to rolling to my left, away from the car toward which I was heading. My left knee made it to the driveway and I successfully rolled left onto my back and stuck my arms and legs straight up into the air demonstrating that what had just happened was an intentional act. A dumb one, but intentional. But it wasn’t. It was dumb, but it wasn’t intentional.

So, there I lay, waiting for everything to start hurting really bad, but there was no immediate pain. Apparently enough adrenalin had been released that all the little tiny blood vessels in the skinned part of my injured areas were squeezed shut, and the pain receptors were disabled for a bit.

All three of the observers were laughing at this point, confident that nothing had been broken because there was no resounding crack from